Lecture Notes | Philo Sci 2 | Lecture 2 | Popper and the Problem of Demarcation December 28, 2009
Posted by Arvin in School, Science.Tags: Karl Popper, Philosophy of Science, Pseudo-science, Science
trackback
Philo Scie 1
Lecture 2: Popper and the Problem of Demarcation
Personal Notes
The distinguishing mark of science, for Popper, is that it seeks to falsify, not to confirm, its hypotheses.
= That is a remarkable proposal. I do the same thing with religion. I seek to falsify what i believe as true faith.
Advantage = that leaves no room for doubt. Attempts in falsifying a true “truth” would in fact strip off misconceptions and untruths associated with it, thereby strengthening the corollary thruths supporting the greater truth.
Such a mode of thinking encourages open-mindedness and scientific/professional maturity, without necessarily wearing the cloak of high scholarship.
epistemic = of relating to knowledge
Karl Popper’s Demarcation = Drawing the line between pseudo-science and science
People tend to read far more into the principle of demarcation than there really is. All that ‘falsifiability’ amounts to is the fact that a theory (= scientific explanation) is more abstract and/or more general than any specific situation (observation) that is compatible with the theory. Therefore, you can logically deduce what observations are compatible with the theory, but there is no *logical* way of going from a particular observation to a singular theory that explains that observation.